I am a licensed MFT (Marriage and Family Therapist) and I have had the privilege of working with children, adolescents and families for the past 20 years. As an MFT, I am trained to provide psychotherapy to individuals and family systems with a focus on relationships. I have built my practice specializing in the treatment of young people, ages 5-30, to help address the many cognitive and emotional issues that can have a unique and significant impact on the youth and young adults in our society.
Individually, I treat children and adolescents facing a variety of concerns, while also working with parent-child and parent-teen interactions, as well as providing parenting support to strengthen overall family relationships. All treatment plans are individualized and are developed collaboratively with clients to include the families goals and to ensure that the reasons for coming to therapy are addressed.
An essential part of any effective therapeutic relationship is a genuine connection.
I believe that the relationship between the client and the therapist is one of the most important and foundational aspects of therapy and that is always the place I start. I believe in providing the most efficacious treatment and I keep myself educated on the research literature regarding child and adolescent mental health, and I work using the various components of the evidenced-based modality, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), to provide the most effective clinical treatment for my clients. I believe that the best practice for treating children and adolescents includes collaboration with pediatricians, psychiatrists, teachers, and other specialized providers as needed to ensure the most comprehensive support. I believe in working with clients at points over time, since the needs of children and adolescents grow and change at varying paces throughout the developmental process.
An additional area of my practice related to my goal in supporting kids, is in working with families going through the separation and divorce process. There are many important considerations for children and parents during such a trying family time, and I have developed some areas of my expertise to help with reinforcing the needed structure for children to develop and grow in a positive direction during and after divorce.
I am grateful to have the opportunity to do the work that I do, one that involves the most basic and most highly cherished elements of human existence; our relationship with self and others.
I am most often accompanied in my office by my 15 pound cocker spaniel, Georgia. She loves coming to the office and she is engaging, playful and affectionate with clients of all ages. Georgia participates in session on a case-by-case basis, but for those who are less inclined to have her be a part of our time together, she will take a break in her crate.
Research and my personal observations with Georgia, show that a dog is often a welcome addition during therapy sessions. Friendly, socialized dogs can be ideal healers in therapeutic interactions as they are highly attuned to human contact, and their mere presence can put clients at ease. The benefits of pets to our mental health is also well documented (see here for a list of benefits with citations).
The children whose outlook for mental health is better are those who cope with the same danger situations actively by way of resources such as intellectual understanding, logical reasoning, changing of external circumstances ... by mastery instead of retreat.
